The automotive industry is attempting to better protect pedestrians from head on collisions with vehicles. When a car hits a pedestrian in a front collision, the pedestrian is thrown up and often lands on the front hood of the vehicle and/or the windshield. In an effort to ameliorate the harshness of the impact, it would be desirable for the front hood to not be rigidly connected to the frame, but rather flexibly coupled so that the hood has some springiness to it to somewhat absorb the impact.
This causes issues for the design and construction of the front hood latch. On the one hand, the hood springiness is desired. On the other hand, the hood has to open and close, and upon closing the latch it is desirable for the latch to react to the hood slam in the manner that consumers have been accustomed to, i.e., solidly, without appearing to reciprocate due to the springiness in the system. The latch must also prohibit the hood from unduly moving due to road vibrations and wind load. The invention seeks to provide a solution to at least some of these objectives.